The secret door was – Narnia of Narnias – in the back of the mahogany wardrobe.
It clicked open mutedly to reveal a little spiral staircase, with that ancient but familiar smell of old stone, which led us down and down to the bottom of the house and below.
I kept one hand in Henry’s with the other trailing down the gritty wall, the stone rough under my fingertips, wondering all the time where we were going. As we corkscrewed down into the blackness, I started to see a glow of light. It might have been comforting if it wasn’t for what I heard.
Chanting.
This spooky, monkish chanting, of a lot of people in an echoing chamber. We rounded the last turn of the stair, and the world opened out again, into a vast, cavernous space.
We were in some sort of underground chapel. I remembered then what Caro had said – the house was built in Georgian times, but the foundations are much older. This must have been part of the original house – the one where Nazereth de Warlencourt lived. I looked about me in the candlelit dimness. There were no windows, but a forest of pillars around the perimeter of the room reaching up to arch and meet at the top in these monastic-looking cross-ribs. The place was lit by about a thousand candles set into little niches. We were in a stone gallery high up in the eaves of the vaulting, and Henry ushered me along it, a finger to his lips. We had an ideal vantage point, completely hidden from below but with the scene set out beneath us, complete and perfect, as if we were sitting in the stalls of a theatre. We stood, leaning together on the stone balustrade and looking down.
And I could hardly believe what I saw.
Far below, on a paved floor of a complicated design, stood probably about fifty figures. They were all in floor-length red gowns with deep cowls that entirely hid their faces. Set upon their heads were black antlers.
For the second time in my life, I came face to face with the Dark Order of the Grand Stag.
It was then, after all this time, that it hit me. I’d buried my trial so deep that I wouldn’t have to think about it. The horror of facing a circle just like this one, of being questioned with my neck in a noose, of being branded on the thumb, the searing and sudden pain, all came back to me. I think on some level I’d been able to convince myself it had all been some sort of nightmare, despite the brand that was with me every second of my life as a permanent reminder.
For a horrible moment I thought Henry had brought me here to serve me up like a Christmas turkey, as some sort of sick STAGS sacrifice. I started shaking until he put an arm about my shoulders and pressed his lips to my hair. ‘Steady,’ he breathed. ‘Steady. They’re not here for you.’
‘Jesus,’ I breathed, ‘what is this?’ I turned to him. ‘Henry. What is this?’
I could see him struggling with himself. I honestly think that until that moment he hadn’t fully committed to betraying them.
‘It’s the Red Mass,’ he murmured. ‘The Order’s ritual.’
I looked down upon the scarlet circle, blood racing. I had to grip the balustrade in front of me to stay upright, and my suddenly sweaty fingertips began to slip on the cold stone. The circle stopped chanting – I’m sure it was Latin, but I was so scared I could be wrong; they could have been talking backwards. It was a dreadful inversion of the innocent Christmas Mass we’d been to earlier that same night. If the London Oratory had been God’s House, this – with the horns and all the red – seemed like the dwelling of the Devil.
One of the number turned from the circle, mounted a dais and sat in a chair exactly like the one in the STAGS Club – maybe it was the one from the STAGS Club – with antlers growing from it like twin saplings. Another two figures approached, holding a book between them. Once their leader had taken his seat, the others sat too, on these ornamental stools set into niches around the walls. The seated figure read from the page his assistants held open. You know how, when you’re just about to faint, your blood kind of roars in your ears? Well, mine was roaring so hard it took me some moments before I could register what the Grand Stag was saying.
And Samson said concerning them, ‘Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.’
I got that churchy flashback again. He was reading some sort of Bible lesson.
And Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.
I imagined the foxes with tails aflame, running in terror from their own brushes, spreading fire throughout the Philistine corn.
I registered the image a second before I recognised the voice. It was one I would never forget. I’d heard it interviewing me for STAGS, I’d heard it telling the story of St Aidan’s stag at Justitium Mass and I’d heard it trying me for the murder of the young man I was sitting with now. ‘Is that the Old Abbot?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry.
‘Not dead then?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Did they get him away from STAGS because I’d figured out who he was?’
‘It was safer that way.’
Another thought struck me. ‘And is Abbot Ridley here? He’s in this too, right?’
‘Who’s Abbot Ridley?’
‘The new Abbot. He runs your Order’s school.’
‘Never heard of him.’
This was striking. I thought I could tell when Henry was telling the truth by this point, and I thought he was telling it now. Maybe Abbot Ridley was innocent, despite him gaslighting me about Esmé Stuart and skulking around Oxford in the snow like a modern-day Harry Lime. But I couldn’t question Henry further because the Old Abbot was speaking again.
‘Brother Longcross? How many foxes for our Boxing Day meet?’
‘One. Tyeesha Morgan.’ I recognised Rollo’s voice and shivered despite myself. So there it was: what we’d suspected, confirmed. Despite her courage, and despite Louis’s regard, Ty was indeed to be the prey for this sickest of hunts.
‘One?’ the Abbot sounded surprised, and not in a good way. ‘Not two?’
‘One only.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite.’ Rollo did sound sure, to be fair.
‘You know to whom I am referring,’ said the Abbot in steely tones. ‘What of the boy? What of Shafeen Jadeja?’
Shafeen. It was a shock to hear his name like that, in this company. I waited, heart thudding.
‘No.’ In that moment Rollo sounded even more of a boss than the Old Abbot. ‘The boy will not be touched.’
Warm relief washed over me, but Henry’s reaction was quite different. His face hardened and his grip tightened on my arm. At that moment I understood. He was jealous of Shafeen. And not just because of me. Because his father liked him – a father who had locked his own son in a cupboard with a fox, a son who was never good enough for him.
‘And the recent threat?’ The Old Abbot sounded a bit huffy but had definitely climbed back in his box a bit. I wondered if there was a bit of a power struggle going on between these two – contemporaries, STAGS old boys and … rivals?
‘The Manslayer was tried and branded, as you know, and brought within this house.’
Another jolt. Now they were talking about me.
‘And?’
‘She is being handled,’ said Rollo calmly. ‘No further action will be needed.’
‘Meaning?’ The menace had returned to the Old Abbot’s voice.
‘We have brought her into the fold.’
I looked sideways at Henry, and his eyes flickered to mine sheepishly. ‘They’re talking about you, aren’t they?’ I whispered. ‘Is that your job? To handle me? Is that what you’re doing now?’
‘No, of course not. Why would I bring you here if it was?’
I saw his point. If he’d wanted to woo me onto Team de Warlencourt, he would never have brought me to the Red Mass. Roses on the pillow were one thing, midnight conspiracies to murder quite another. The Grand Stag was speaking again.
‘Very well. And now, back to our Yuletide endeavours. What of the meet at Longcross? How many brothers and sisters of the House of Lords have you managed to shepherd into the herd?’
‘Many,’ said Rollo. ‘Most. Our gatherings will have little interference in the new year, once our bill goes through the House.’
‘And the prince?’
‘Will attend.’ I took my breath in a little gasp. Rollo didn’t specify which royal family this ‘prince’ was from, but if it was the British one, then this thing went right to the top, just as it had in Elizabeth I’s day.
‘Very well,’ said the Old Abbot, sounding a little less pissed off. ‘We all meet at Longcross on Boxing Day, and at our next Mass, with the will of the Stag, we will rejoice at the success of our endeavours. Now we sing.’
I totally knew what their hymn would be. I knew every word of it. As the running deer seeks the flowing brook, even so my soul longs for you, O God.
As they sang, Henry leaned in to my ear once more.
‘It’s coming to an end. You should go back.’
Moments ago, I would have given anything to run from this place. Now I couldn’t leave him. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m safe here,’ whispered Henry. ‘I’m one of them.’
His words chilled me. And then I realised. The cold silk, the flowing gown. He wasn’t wearing a dressing gown. He was wearing a red robe.
Under the cover of the singing, I fled back up the winding stairs. At the top I turned and shoved the door closed, and you couldn’t even see the join. I knew it was futile, but I pulled the heavy chest of drawers in front of the wardrobe. Then a chair, then a footstool on top of the chair.
By the time I’d finished my makeshift barricade the grey of dawn was bleeding through the curtains. As I fell into bed, the last thing I noticed was that the dog rose by my bedside had shrivelled into a little organ, pink as flesh, the vivid red quite gone.